Handguns are by far the most common murder weapon used in the United States, accounting for 7,159 homicides in 2023. This is followed by firearms of an unstated type, with 5,295 cases in that year. Why do murders happen in the U.S.? While most of the time the circumstances of murders in the U.S. remain unknown, homicides due to narcotics come in as the second most common circumstance – making them more common than, for example, gang killings. Despite these gruesome facts, the violent crime rate has fallen significantly since 1990, and the United States is much safer than it was in the 1980s and 1990s. Knife crime vs disease: Leading causes of death The death rate in the U.S. had hovered around the same level since 1990 until there was a large increase due to the COVID-19 pandemic in recent years. Heart disease, cancer, and accidents were the three leading causes of death in the country in 2022. The rate of death from heart disease is significantly higher than the homicide rate in the United States, at 167.2 deaths per 100,000 population compared to a 5.7 homicides per 100,000. Given just 1,562 murders were caused by knife crime, it is fair to say that heart disease is a far bigger killer in the U.S.

In 2023, there were over 1.8 million assaults in the United States where personal weapons, such as hands, fists, or feet, were used. There were a further 149,766 assault offenses where handguns were used. What are firearms? Firearms are portable weapons used to shoot bullets. There are several different types of firearms, which include rifles, shotguns, machine guns, and pistols. Gun laws in the United States vary from state to state, where some states have stricter laws than others. Each state has their own constitution, which allows them to have their own interpretation of the Second Amendment of the Constitution. Gun culture in the United States is a large part of certain regions, where they share similar attitudes and beliefs about firearms and their right to own them. Aggravated Assault Aggravated assault is an intended action to cause serious bodily harm to someone else. In 2023, New Mexico had the highest rate of aggravated assault in the U.S., with Alaska, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana rounding out the top five. In contrast, the reported violent crime rate has decreased significantly since 1990, meaning that the U.S. is safer now than it was thirty years ago.

Number of homicide victims, by method used to commit the homicide (total methods used; shooting; stabbing; beating; strangulation; fire (burns or suffocation); other methods used; methods used unknown), Canada, 1974 to 2024.

These data were prepared in conjunction with a project using Bureau of Labor Statistics data (not provided with this collection) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program data to examine the relationship between unemployment and violent crime. Three separate time-series data files were created as part of this project: a national time series (Part 1), a state time series (Part 2), and a time series of data for 12 selected cities: Baltimore, Buffalo, Chicago, Columbus, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Newark, New York City, Paterson (New Jersey), and Philadelphia (Part 3). Each data file was constructed to include 82 monthly time series: 26 series containing the number of Part I (crime index) offenses known to police (excluding arson) by weapon used, 26 series of the number of offenses cleared by arrest or other exceptional means by weapon used in the offense, 26 series of the number of offenses cleared by arrest or other exceptional means for persons under 18 years of age by weapon used in the offense, a population estimate series, and three date indicator series. For the national and state data, agencies from the 50 states and Washington, DC, were included in the aggregated data file if they reported at least one month of information during the year. In addition, agencies that did not report their own data (and thus had no monthly observations on crime or arrests) were included to make the aggregated population estimate as close to Census estimates as possible. For the city time series, law enforcement agencies with jurisdiction over the 12 central cities were identified and the monthly data were extracted from each UCR annual file for each of the 12 agencies. The national time-series file contains 82 time series, the state file contains 4,083 time series, and the city file contains 963 time series, each with 228 monthly observations per time series. The unit of analysis is the month of observation. Monthly crime and clearance totals are provided for homicide, negligent manslaughter, total rape, forcible rape, attempted forcible rape, total robbery, firearm robbery, knife/cutting instrument robbery, other dangerous weapon robbery, strong-arm robbery, total assault, firearm assault, knife/cutting instrument assault, other dangerous weapon assault, simple nonaggravated assault, assaults with hands/fists/feet, total burglary, burglary with forcible entry, unlawful entry-no force, attempted forcible entry, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, auto theft, truck and bus theft, other vehicle theft, and grand total of all actual offenses.

Knives or other sharp objects were involved in ** percent of homicides in England and Wales in 2023/24, the most of any method of killing. Homicides which involved hitting or kicking without a weapon made up **** percent of homicides, while shootings were identified as the method in *** percent of homicides. Overall, there were *** homicides in this reporting year, which was slightly lower than in the previous year, when there were ***, but noticeably higher than in 2014/15, when there were ***. Firearm homicides rare in England and Wales In 2023/24, there were *** knife homicides in England and Wales, compared with *** in 2021/22, which was the highest figure recently. By comparison, homicides which involved the use of a firearm were far less common, with just ** in the 2023/24 reporting year. Due to strict gun laws and low levels of ownership, the UK contrasts starkly with the United States, which has struggled with high levels of gun violence. Although some specialist police officers in England and Wales are licensed to carry firearms, the majority of police officers are unarmed. In 2023/24, for example, there were just ***** armed police, out of around ******* police officers. Overall knife crime on the rise Like many other types of crime, knife crime offences in the ***** started to decline at the start of the decade before creeping up again from 2014 onwards, reaching almost ****** in 2019/20. In London, where much of the media’s attention on knife crime is focused, there were ****** knife crime offences alone in 2019/20. Although this fell during subsequent reporting years, which were influenced by COVID-19 restrictions, it remains to be seen if the trend will continue. In 2023/24, the number of knife offences in the capital was higher than in any other year since 2019/20.

In 2024/25, there were 104 homicide offences recorded in London, the most of any region of the United Kingdom during that time period. North West England, which includes the large cities of Manchester and Liverpool, had 69 homicides and had the second-highest number of homicides. In the same reporting period, the constituent countries of Wales and Northern Ireland reported the fewest homicides, at 23, and 13 respectively. Homicides in the UK falling despite recent uptick Since 2002/03, all three jurisdictions of the UK; England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, have seen their homicide rates fall, with Scotland seeing the steepest decline. The most significant decline in homicides in this period occurred between 2002/03 and 2014/15, which saw the annual number of homicides in England and Wales half from over 1,000 to around 500. This trend was suddenly reversed from 2015/16 onwards, with homicides rising to around 700 per year between 2016/17 and 2019/20. While homicides fell back to 535 in 2024/25, it remains to be seen if this pattern will continue. Knives used in almost half of all murders In 2024/25 a knife or other sharp instruments were used in approximately 46 percent of all murders in England and Wales, making this, by far, the most common method of killing in that reporting year. The overall number of knife homicides reached 262 in 2023/24, compared with 243 in the previous year. Firearm homicides were much rarer than knife homicides, with only 22 taking place in the same reporting year, and homicides caused by shooting only accounting for 3.9 percent of homicides overall.

Turks and Caicos Islands saw a murder rate of ***** per 100,000 inhabitants, making it the most dangerous country for this kind of crime worldwide as of 2024. Interestingly, El Salvador, which long had the highest global homicide rates, has dropped out of the top 29 after a high number of gang members have been incarcerated. Meanwhile, Colima in Mexico was the most dangerous city for murders. Violent conflicts worldwide Notably, these figures do not include deaths that resulted from war or a violent conflict. While there is a persistent number of conflicts worldwide, resulting casualties are not considered murders. Partially due to this reason, homicide rates in Latin America are higher than those in Afghanistan or Syria. A different definition of murder in these circumstances could change the rate significantly in some countries. Causes of death Also, noteworthy is that murders are usually not random events. In the United States, the circumstances of murders are most commonly arguments, followed by narcotics incidents and robberies. Additionally, murders are not a leading cause of death. Heart diseases, strokes and cancer pose a greater threat to life than violent crime.

V6 release notes: Fix bug where Philadelphia Police Department had incorrect FIPS county code. V5 release notes: Changes the word "larceny" to "theft" in column names - eg. from "act_larceny" to "act_theft."Fixes bug where state abbrebation was NA for Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Canal Zone.Fixes bug where officers_killed_by_accident was not appearing in yearly data. Note that 1979 does not have any officers killed (by felony or accident) or officers assaulted data.Adds aggravated assault columns to the monthly data. Aggravated assault is the sum of all assaults other than simple assault (assaults using gun, knife, hand/feet, and other weapon). Note that summing all crime columns to get a total crime count will double count aggravated assault as it is already the sum of existing columns. Reorder columns to put all month descriptors (e.g. "jan_month_included", "jan_card_1_type") before any crime data.Due to extremely irregular data in the unfounded columns for New Orleans (ORI = LANPD00) for years 2014-2016, I have change all unfounded column data for New Orleans for these years to NA. As an example, New Orleans reported about 45,000 unfounded total burglaries in 2016 (the 3rd highest they ever reported). This is 18 times largest than the number of actual total burglaries they reported that year (2,561) and nearly 8 times larger than the next largest reported unfounded total burglaries in any agency or year. Prior to 2014 there were no more than 10 unfounded total burglaries reported in New Orleans in any year. There were 10 obvious data entry errors in officers killed by felony/accident that I changed to NA.In 1974 the agency "Boston" (ORI = MA01301) reported 23 officers killed by accident during November.In 1978 the agency "Pittsburgh" (ORI = PAPPD00) reported 576 officers killed by accident during March.In 1978 the agency "Bronx Transit Authority" (ORI = NY06240) reported 56 officers killed by accident during April.In 1978 the agency "Bronx Transit Authority" (ORI = NY06240) reported 56 officers killed by accident during June.In 1978 the agency "Bronx Transit Authority" (ORI = NY06240) reported 56 officers killed by felony during April.In 1978 the agency "Bronx Transit Authority" (ORI = NY06240) reported 56 officers killed by felony during June.In 1978 the agency "Queens Transit Authority" (ORI = NY04040) reported 56 officers killed by accident during May.In 1978 the agency "Queens Transit Authority" (ORI = NY04040) reported 56 officers killed by felony during May.In 1996 the agency "Ruston" in Louisiana (ORI = LA03102) reported 30 officers killed by felony during September.In 1997 the agency "Washington University" in Missouri (ORI = MO0950E) reported 26 officers killed by felony during March.V4 release notes: Merges data with LEAIC data to add FIPS codes, census codes, agency type variables, and ORI9 variable.Makes all column names lowercase.Change some variable namesMakes values in character columns lowercase.Adds months_reported variable to yearly data.Combines monthly and yearly files into a single zip file (per data type).V3 release notes: fixes a bug in Version 2 where 1993 data did not properly deal with missing values, leading to enormous counts of crime being reported. Summary: This is a collection of Offenses Known and Clearances By Arrest data from 1960 to 2016. Each zip file contains monthly and yearly data files. The monthly files contain one data file per year (57 total, 1960-2016) as well as a codebook for each year. These files have been read into R using the ASCII and setup files from ICPSR (or from the FBI for 2016 data) using the package asciiSetupReader. The end of the zip folder's name says what data type (R, SPSS, SAS, Microsoft Excel CSV, Stata) the data is in. The files are lightly cleaned. What this means specifically is that column names and value labels are standardized. In the original data column names were different between years (e.g. the December burglaries cleared column is "DEC_TOT_CLR_BRGLRY_TOT" in 1975 and "DEC_TOT_CLR_BURG_TOTAL" in 1977). The data here have standardized columns so you can compare between years and combine years together. The same thing is done for values inside of columns. For example, the state column gave state names in some years, abbreviations in others. For the code uses to clean and read the data, please see my GitHub file h

This study of violent incidents among middle- and high-school students focused not only on the types and frequency of these incidents, but also on their dynamics -- the locations, the opening moves, the relationship between the disputants, the goals and justifications of the aggressor, the role of third parties, and other factors. For this study, violence was defined as an act carried out with the intention, or perceived intention, of physically injuring another person, and the "opening move" was defined as the action of a respondent, antagonist, or third party that was viewed as beginning the violent incident. Data were obtained from interviews with 70 boys and 40 girls who attended public schools with populations that had high rates of violence. About half of the students came from a middle school in an economically disadvantaged African-American section of a large southern city. The neighborhood the school served, which included a public housing project, had some of the country's highest rates of reported violent crime. The other half of the sample were volunteers from an alternative high school attended by students who had committed serious violations of school rules, largely involving illegal drugs, possession of handguns, or fighting. Many students in this high school, which is located in a large city in the southern part of the Midwest, came from high-crime areas, including public housing communities. The interviews were open-ended, with the students encouraged to speak at length about any violent incidents in school, at home, or in the neighborhood in which they had been involved. The 110 interviews yielded 250 incidents and are presented as text files, Parts 3 and 4. The interview transcriptions were then reduced to a quantitative database with the incident as the unit of analysis (Part 1). Incidents were diagrammed, and events in each sequence were coded and grouped to show the typical patterns and sub-patterns in the interactions. Explanations the students offered for the violent-incident behavior were grouped into two categories: (1) "justifications," in which the young people accepted responsibility for their violent actions but denied that the actions were wrong, and (2) "excuses," in which the young people admitted the act was wrong but denied responsibility. Every case in the incident database had at least one physical indicator of force or violence. The respondent-level file (Part 2) was created from the incident-level file using the AGGREGATE procedure in SPSS. Variables in Part 1 include the sex, grade, and age of the respondent, the sex and estimated age of the antagonist, the relationship between respondent and antagonist, the nature and location of the opening move, the respondent's response to the opening move, persons present during the incident, the respondent's emotions during the incident, the person who ended the fight, punishments imposed due to the incident, whether the respondent was arrested, and the duration of the incident. Additional items cover the number of times during the incident that something was thrown, the respondent was pushed, slapped, or spanked, was kicked, bit, or hit with a fist or with something else, was beaten up, cut, or bruised, was threatened with a knife or gun, or a knife or gun was used on the respondent. Variables in Part 2 include the respondent's age, gender, race, and grade at the time of the interview, the number of incidents per respondent, if the respondent was an armed robber or a victim of an armed robbery, and whether the respondent had something thrown at him/her, was pushed, slapped, or spanked, was kicked, bit, or hit with a fist or with something else, was beaten up, was threatened with a knife or gun, or had a knife or gun used on him/her.

This statistic shows the rate of homicides in Canada and the United States from 2000 to 2023. There were 6.3 homicides in the U.S. in 2022 and 2.27 homicides in Canada per 100,000 residents in 2022.

Police recorded crime figures by Police Force Area and Community Safety Partnership areas (which equate in the majority of instances, to local authorities).

The number of knife or sharp instrument offences recorded by the police in London rose to approximately 16,344 in 2024/25, compared with 15,016 in the previous year. This was the highest number of knife crime offences reported in London during this provided time period. Between 2015/16 and 2019/20, knife crime in London increased yearly, with a particularly large increase occurring between 2016/16 and 2017/18. A wider trend The increase in knife crime witnessed in London has occurred alongside a general increase in overall crime throughout England and Wales. In 2022/23, there were approximately 6.74 million crime offences across England and Wales, compared with just over four million ten years earlier. During a similar time period, the number of knife homicides also increased, and reached 282 in 2017/18, compared with 186 in 2014/15. Due to strict gun laws in the United Kingdom, firearms are rarely used to commit homicides, with knives or other sharp instruments being used in over 46 percent of homicides in 2023/24. Acid and moped attacks While knife crime in London has certainly been given a lot of attention by the British media, the increase in acid and moped attacks during the same time period also generated many headlines. In 2017, for example, there were 471 acid attacks recorded by the Metropolitan Police, compared with just 51 in 2007. Moped crime also reached high levels in 2017, with both types of crime declining to much lower levels by the early 2020s. Although overall crime in London continued to rise until 2019/20, this fell back during the COVID-19 pandemic, but by 2023/24, the number of crimes committed in the capital had exceeded pre-pandemic levels.

In 2019, there were *** victims of workplace homicide across the United States. Among these, the most common cause of death was shootings, with *** people falling victim to gun violence. The second leading cause of death was knife-related incidents, with ** victims in 2019.

Incident-based crime statistics (actual incidents, rate per 100,000 population, percentage change in rate, unfounded incidents, percent unfounded, total cleared, cleared by charge, cleared otherwise, persons charged, adults charged, youth charged / not charged), by detailed violations (violent, property, traffic, drugs, other Federal Statutes), police services in Manitoba, 1998 to 2024.

In Europe, the Baltic countries of Latvia and Lithuania had the highest and third highest homicide rates respectively in 2023. Latvia had the highest rate at over four per 100,000 inhabitants. Meanwhile, the lowest homicide rate was found in Liechtenstein, with zero murders The most dangerous country worldwide Saint Kitts and Nevis is the world's most dangerous country to live in in terms of murder rate. The Caribbean country had a homicide rate of 65 per 100,000 inhabitants. Nine of the 10 countries with the highest murder rates worldwide are located in Latin America and the Caribbean. Whereas Celaya in Mexico was listed as the city with the highest murder rate worldwide, Colima in Mexico was the city with the highest homicide rate in Latin America, so the numbers vary from source to source. Nevertheless, several Mexican cities rank among the deadliest in the world when it comes to intentional homicides. Violent conflicts worldwide Notably, these figures do not include deaths that resulted from war or a violent conflict. While there is a persistent number of conflicts worldwide, resulting casualties are not considered murders. Partially due to this reason, homicide rates in Latin America are higher than those in countries such as Ukraine or the DR Congo. A different definition of murder in these circumstances could change the rate significantly.

In 2025, Pietermaritzburg in South Africa ranked as the world's most dangerous city with a crime rate of 82 per 100,000 inhabitants. Five of the 10 cities with the highest crime rates worldwide are found in South Africa. The list does not include countries where war and conflict exist. South Africa dominates crime statistics When looking at crime rates, among the 10 most dangerous cities in the world, half of them are found in South Africa. The country is struggling with extremely high levels of inequality, and is struggling with high levels of crime and power outages, harming the country's economy and driving more people into unemployment and poverty. Crime in Latin America On the other hand, when looking at murder rates, Latin America dominates the list of the world's most dangerous countries. Violence in Latin America is caused in great part by drug trafficking, weapons trafficking, and gang wars.